Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
July 17, 2017
Pyeongchang Olympics: Icy path to warmer Korean relations
By Hyung-jin Kim
The Associated Press
Yonhap via AP
AP Photo/Mark Baker, File
S
EOUL, South Korea — Tears and
hugs after North and South Korean
women won the 1991 team table
tennis world championships. A standing
ovation when athletes from the two Koreas
marched together to open the 2000 Sydney
Olympics. A selfie taken by a South
Korean gymnast with her North Korean
opponent that went viral at last year’s Rio
de Janeiro Games.
Seven months ahead of the Pyeong-
chang Olympics, South Korea’s new liberal
President Moon Jae-in hopes the first
Winter Games on Korean soil could
produce more of these feel-good sparks of
seeming reconciliation and pave the way
for deep engagement to ease the rivals’
72-year standoff.
In a good development for Moon,
International Olympic Committee (IOC)
president Thomas Bach expressed his
support for Moon’s overture while North
Korea recently allowed its taekwondo
demonstration team to perform in the
South in the Koreas’ first sports exchanges
since Moon’s May 10 inauguration.
But there is also plenty of skepticism
about Moon’s efforts because of a serious
escalation in North Korean nuclear and
missile arsenals — North Korea recently
test-fired a missile likely capable of
striking Alaska — and a weak North
Korean winter sports program that sent
only two athletes to the 2010 Vancouver
Games and none to the 2014 Sochi Games.
Sydney and Rio were both Summer
Olympics.
North Korea’s only IOC member, Chang
Ung, said cooperation on the Pyeongchang
Games could prove hard considering the
shortage of time and difficult politics.
What follows is an examination of South
Korea’s attempt to make North Korea a
key part of the Olympics set for February 9
through 25.
Moon’s plan
During a speech at the world taekwondo
championship in the South that drew
Chang and North Korean athletes, Moon
appealed for North Korea’s Olympic
participation while talking about the
power of sports and citing the historic
“ping-pong diplomacy” between the United
States and China in the 1970s.
“I think (North Korea’s Olympic atten-
dance) would greatly contribute in
realizing Olympic values, which are about
bringing humanity together and pro-
moting world peace,” Moon said during the
event’s opening ceremony on June 24.
Moon previously said he wants North
Korean athletes to visit the South by
crossing over the heavily fortified land
border between the Koreas — a deeply
symbolic event that would excite frenzied
media coverage. He also proposed holding
a pre-Olympic celebratory event at the
North’s scenic Diamond Mountain, where
the two Koreas once ran a tourism
program.
Moon’s sports minister, Do Jong-hwan,
told lawmakers recently that South Korea
was also studying a joint women’s ice
hockey team with North Korea for the
Pyeongchang Games. Other ideas: using a
recently built North Korean ski resort as a
training site and adding North Korea to
the Olympic torch relay route.
During their meeting at Moon’s presi-
dential palace in Seoul, Bach said he
actively supports Moon’s push for Korean
peace and said it’s in accordance with the
Olympic spirit, according to Moon’s office.
But some of the measures floated by the
Moon government require formal IOC
approvals, and Pyeongchang organizers
say nothing has been officially determined
yet.
Chang suggested it may be too late to try
to field a single Olympic team, saying it
took five to six months, or 22 rounds of
inter-Korean talks, before fielding a single
women’s table tennis team in 1991. He also
questioned how much sports could impact
relations between the Koreas.
“Did table tennis improve relations be-
tween the United States and China? Ping-
pong was able to work as a catalyst
because a political foundation had already
been created. The world was saying ping-
pong made things work, but that wasn’t
the case,” Chang told South Korean report-
ers. “Politics are always above sports.”
The sports obstacles
North Korea is not strong in winter
sports.
The only North Korean athletes who are
thought to have a realistic shot at making
the 2018 Olympics are a North Korean
pairs figure skating team. Even if they
qualify, it will mean less than 10 North
Koreans — two athletes plus coaches and
officials — would come to Pyeongchang.
This small squad — or no athletes at all
— could make it difficult to create a mood
of reconciliation. Still, South Korean
officials are looking at other ways to get
North Korea involved.
Pyeongchang’s organizing committee
said it’s discussing with South Korean
government officials whether to ask the
IOC and other international sports bodies
to give North Korea special entries if no
North Korean athletes qualify for the
Olympics.
South Korea is also reviewing whether
to hold out-of-competition matches during
the Olympics that would allow North
Korean athletes to compete, according to
Moon’s Unification Ministry.
The South’s organizing committee said
special entries and extra games have not
been allowed at past Winter Games.
The nuclear obstacles
Relations between the Koreas are
dismal as the North pursues its nuclear
ambitions.
Since taking power in late 2011, North
Korean leader Kim Jong Un has conducted
three atomic test explosions and ordered a
raft of ballistic-missile launches as part of
his stated goal of building nuclear missiles
capable of reaching the continental United
States. Moon’s conservative predecessors
responded by suspending major aid
shipments and cross-border cooperation
projects.
Moon has pledged to improve ties and
promised to use the Pyeongchang Games
to ease cross-border animosities. But any
big North Korean weapon test close to the
Pyeongchang Games could trigger strong
anti-North sentiments both at home and
abroad and make it hard for Moon to press
ahead with his overtures.
“What’s most important is that North
Korea not act in a way that earns
President Moon criticism when he makes a
gesture of reconciliation,” said Jung Moon-
hyun, a sports science professor at Chung-
nam National University in South Korea.
Sports diplomacy
At the height of the Cold War, sports
were another battlefield between the
Koreas. North Korea boycotted the 1986
Asian Games and the 1988 Olympics, both
held in Seoul.
But sports exchanges briefly flourished
in the early 1990s before a nuclear crisis
erupted. This cooperation included the
North-South women’s table tennis team
championship over China in 1991, and a
unified world youth boys’ soccer team that
OLYMPIC DIPLOMACY. North Korea’s Song
Chol Ri carries the flag during the opening ceremony
of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics in Vancouver,
Canada, in this February 12, 2010 file photo. Seven
months ahead of the Pyeongchang Olympics, many
in South Korea, including new liberal President Moon
Jae-in, hope to use the games as a venue to promote
peace with rival North Korea. To do so, the North’s
participation is essential, but ongoing nuclear tensions
and a lack of winter sports athletes in North Korea
could ruin attempts at reconciliation. In the bottom
photo, an April 24, 1991 file photo, North Korean Li
Pun Hui, left, and South Korean Hyun Jung-hwa —
the first-ever unified team of the Koreas — participate
in the women’s doubles event at the World Table
Tennis Championships in Chiba, Japan.
reached the quarterfinals later that year.
These were the last unified Korean
sports teams, but the rivals found other
ways to cooperate.
After the leaders of North and South
Korea met for landmark summit talks in
Pyongyang in June 2000, athletes from the
Koreas walked behind a blue-and-white
“unification” flag for the first time at the
opening ceremony of the Sydney Summer
Games. This happened at other major
international sports events, but the
practice stopped after the 2007 Asian
Winter Games in Chuangchun, China.
Despite terrible political ties amid the
nuclear standoff, cross-border sports
exchanges between the Koreas did not
disappear entirely.
North Korea attended the 2014 Asian
Games held in Incheon, South Korea. At
the close of the games, three top
Pyongyang officials made a surprise visit
and held the Koreas’ highest-level
face-to-face talks in five years.
This spring, North Korea’s women’s ice
hockey team came to the South to take part
in the group rounds of the world
championships, while the South’s national
women’s soccer team travelled to the
North for an Asian Cup qualifying match.
One of the feel-good highlights of the Rio
Games last year came when a 17-year-old
South Korean gymnast named Lee Eun-ju
took a selfie with North Korea’s Hong Un
Jong as they trained for competition. The
photo captured global headlines, and Bach
described it as a “great gesture.”
It’s far from certain whether Pyeong-
chang will have any similar gestures.
Associated Press writer Kim Tong-
hyung contributed to this report.
q
Robots to aid tourists, clean
floors at South Korean airport
Continued from page 2
chief research engineer at LG Electronics
who oversaw the robot’s development.
It is meant to be a fast learner: Troika
will soon be speaking English, Korean,
Chinese, and Japanese, Kim said.
However, the robot can only perform a few
simple tasks it has been programmed to
carry out.
During a test run, it failed to recognize
some voice commands, such as when
Amethyst Ma of San Jose, California,
asked how she and her kids could catch a
bus to the city.
Still, such machines could be quite
useful for overseas travellers, Ma said.
“It’s becoming common in a lot of public
places so that’s why I came to it right
away,” she said. “It’s a source of
information, especially if we don’t speak
the local language.”
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